


Ab Initio

by MilesHibernus



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, M/M, The Defenders (Marvel TV) Spoilers, Time Travel, canon AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:13:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12504012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilesHibernus/pseuds/MilesHibernus
Summary: He’s also...a little miffed?  It should make him happy that someone’s helping the people of his city without him having to get involved—he shudders to think of the ethical implications of adefense attorneygoing out and doing what the Devil does, not that he was going to let that stop him—but it actually bugs him, just a little, that someoneelseis doing it.  He feels like he should be helping, or at least should have been consulted.





	1. Chapter 1

After the woman from CPS leaves, Matt sits for a long time in the chair he thinks of as Foggy’s, elbows on his knees and fists in his hair. It hurts, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t hurt as much as being betrayed by a parent you should be able to trust, and it sure as fuck doesn’t hurt as much as crucifixion, so he’s got no room to complain.   
  
Finally he sits up and slips out of the chair onto his knees. “If what I intend to do is wrong, I’m sorry,” he prays aloud. “I can’t sit by and let this go on. You gave me the ability to help. I need to help.”  
  
There’s no answer, but there never is, and Matt’s OK with that. Answers are for confession.

* * *

Except that four days pass, and he doesn’t hear it. He knows Cynthia Waterford’s on the night shift so he braces himself to let it happen one last time, but there’s nothing. The murmurs of  _But you said you loved me_  and  _Mom wouldn’t understand_  and  _Shut up and do what you’re told_  don’t find their way down the block; he doesn’t have to leave the apartment and walk as fast as he can (in public) in the other direction to escape the noises of pain and the quiet crying. He does go out, trying to track Bradley to his usual haunts, figure out a good place to catch him alone (ambush him, Matt shouldn't mince words about this), but he can’t find the man; he doesn’t seem to be home.  
  
Then one of Matt’s infrequent migraines sneaks up on him, and Foggy takes him home on their lunch break and skedaddles back to L&Z to cover for him (as interns they technically get sick leave, but everyone knows it’s a bad idea to take it), and that’s why Matt’s close enough to hear Cynthia sit her daughter down at the kitchen table and say, “Sweetie, if there’s anything you were scared to tell me, you don’t have to be scared anymore. Nothing you say will make me angry with you.”  
  
Someone caught Bradley Waterford as he was sloping home drunk and beat the living hell out of him. He’ll be eating through a straw for a month, and when he gets out of the hospital he’ll be going to jail on charges of rape. From the sound of things Cynthia intends to start divorce proceedings, and Matt only wishes there were some way he could offer to be her lawyer  _pro bono_. He doesn’t specialize in family law, but for this he’d sure as hell read up.  
  
Matt prays a rosary in thanks, and sleeps like the dead, and when he wakes up the migraine is gone.

* * *

A few months later Foggy calls him at 2:30 in the morning. Matt hasn’t been asleep for long but it’s not like Foggy to call so late; he plays at being a selfish jerk but he actually cares more about Matt’s sleep schedule than Matt does.  
  
And he sounds...weird, though Matt honestly has a hard time with emotions over the phone, where he can’t sense any of the other things he normally uses to decode them. “Matt,” Foggy says, his voice tight, “can you come down here?”  
  
“Uh,” says Matt, still about a quarter asleep. “Yes, where’s here?”  
  
Foggy tells him. Matt has long since lost any impulse to stare at things when they confuse him, but he feels himself tense. “OK, A that’s practically in the Village, and B it’s a police station. Are you OK?”  
  
“I’m fine. I even still have my wallet!” Foggy says, with enthusiasm that Matt can tell is false even over the phone. “I can get home alone, it’s not that big a deal, I just—”  
  
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Matt says. He starts to move even as he’s speaking, shedding his sleep pants. “I’m gonna hang up so I can call a cab, but I’ll be there, I promise, OK?”  
  
It takes him less than half an hour to get to the precinct, though once he’s there he has to ask to be taken to Foggy instead of just homing in on the familiar heartbeat. Foggy’s in one of the detectives’ offices, sitting on a swaybacked couch with a cup of terrible coffee. His heart jumps when he sees Matt, and Matt swallows all his questions to give Foggy a hug.  
  
Foggy, it turns out, was mugged. Which isn’t in itself the problem; they’ve both been mugged before, a tax you just expect to pay living in New York City. Heck, once they were mugged  _together_ , and Matt turned over what cash he had rather than punching the guy in the face like he wanted to because he couldn’t figure out how to make it look coincidental. No, the problem was that this mugger didn’t want to let it go at Foggy’s money, phone, and watch.  
  
“My God, Foggy,” Matt says, appalled. It’s not that he’s unaware that such things happen, even to men. But even for a New Yorker, that’s a hard one to be blasé about.  
  
“Yeah,” says Foggy grimly. “I was trying to work out how to punch him in the dick and run for it when this  _guy_  showed up. I mean like out of fucking nowhere, Matt. Like he fell out of the sky.” Foggy must be pretty rattled; he rarely swears.  
  
Matt pauses. “A guy?”  
  
“No shit, there he was,” Foggy agrees. “Wearing some...outfit, I think it was red, it was some hardcore Batman stuff. He had a  _mask_  on.” Foggy laughs. “And he beat Rapey McRaperson within an inch of his life, and then he picked up my stuff and handed it back to me like the world’s kinkiest concierge and said I should be more careful, and then, and I swear I am not shitting you, he jumped onto the Dumpster and went up the fire escape. He went up the fire escape faster than I walk on flat ground.” He draws a deep breath. “I called the cops, they have the mugger, but they want to ask me about the guy too.”  
  
“It sounds like he was there to help,” Matt says. Foggy makes a complicated movement that sounds like it started as a shrug.  
  
“I mean, yes, and don’t get me wrong, I am  _really glad_  I didn’t have to try to punch that asshole in the dick.” So is Matt. Foggy’s hardly helpless, but his strength is talking his way out of things, not punching. “On the other hand, that getup the guy was wearing, it was pretty clear this was not the kind of thing where you’re passing an alley and happen to notice what’s going down. This is a full-time gig for him.”  
  
Matt nods and says lightly, “Technically, being a vigilante is not a crime in New York.” He looked it up, back when he was listening to the Waterfords, out of morbid curiosity about what laws he was planning to break. They'd've had him dead to rights on assault, though.  
  
Foggy snorts. “Why am I not surprised that you know that?”  
  
Matt grins at him; he sounds more like himself, and that can only be good. “OK, well, can you leave or do they want to talk to you tonight?” It’s gonna be the first one if Matt has anything to say about it; he will browbeat the desk sergeant if he has to. Foggy can come back and give a statement  _tomorrow._  
  
“They told me I can go home. They have my info to get in touch.”  
  
“Great.” Matt stands and offers Foggy a hand up.  
  
“Matt,” Foggy says, his voice small.  
  
“What do you need, Fog?”  
  
“Can I sleep on your couch?”  
  
Matt huffs a laugh and slings his arm around Foggy’s shoulders. “I’ll take the couch, buddy,” he says.

* * *

Now that Matt’s paying attention, there do seem to be an awful lot of stories in the news about foiled muggings, criminals being found in less-than-pristine condition near the Fifteenth precinct house, and general consternation among the cops. He doesn’t have as much time as he’d like to poke his nose into it; L&Z keeps him and Foggy hopping and they don’t have a lot of time for extracurricular activities. But he keeps his ears open, and his ears are, well, spectacular.  
  
The Man in the Mask seems to like Hell’s Kitchen; Foggy’s encounter was the furthest afield by quite a stretch. The  _Bulletin_  takes to calling him the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and Matt can’t help but wince at the name.  
  
He’s also...a little miffed? It should make him happy that someone’s helping the people of his city without him having to get involved—he shudders to think of the ethical implications of a  _defense attorney_  going out and doing what the Devil does, not that he was going to let that stop him—but it actually bugs him, just a little, that someone else is doing it. He feels like he should be helping, or at least should have been consulted. It’s nonsense and he knows it; he’s been so very careful to ensure no one knows about what he can do, he doesn’t get to be annoyed that he’s succeeded.  
  
Then Matt notices that for all the Devil’s care for Hell’s Kitchen, he rarely gets close to Matt’s building. It could just be a coincidence; Matt’s block is actually one of the less crime-ridden ones. But as time wears on it starts to look like the Devil is avoiding Matt specifically, and that’s  _very_  interesting. Maybe Matt has an inflated idea of his own importance—every authority figure he’s met since his dad died has warned him not to think of himself as  _too_ special—but it sure seems that way. He takes to plotting reported encounters on a map, pushing glass-headed sewing pins into intersections, and the doughnut-ring around his block just keeps getting denser.  
  
He starts to think about going out hunting, just for a few nights, to get some answers. He orders some black, non-restrictive clothing from Amazon—which is a paper trail, but if it gets to the point that someone’s checking his purchase history he’s screwed anyway. Besides, he has really good alibis for several Devil sightings.  
  
Also he’s  _blind_ , so.  
  
The very first night he thinks he gets close, zeros in on a purse-snatching that gets interrupted with punching, but by the time he gets there the thief is down, stunned and groaning, the victim is half a block away and on the phone to 911, and there’s nothing else but a strange faint chemical-plastic scent he’s never encountered before. Matt sniffs around for lingering body odor in case he encounters the Devil in some other context, but his own scent overpowers whatever traces the Devil might have left. He leaves once the cops show up and heads home over the roofs, annoyed.  
  
After that, the Devil seems to go to ground; Matt would worry he got spotted, but there was no one close enough. He spends a few more nights monitoring, then folds his dark clothes away, figuring he can take a break and try again when the Devil’s had a chance to calm down. He and Foggy are on a new case at work, a guy who’s being sued for leaking proprietary information, and Matt needs to be on the ball. He doesn’t like Landeman and Zach but there’s no denying a permanent position there would be good for getting on his feet before he and Foggy strike out on their own.

* * *

It’s an oppressive late-summer night when Matt’s startled out of sleep. He tunes out the normal sounds of the city just like a person who lives near a freeway ignores the traffic—otherwise he’d never sleep at all without a sensory deprivation tank—but there are feet scuffing over his roof in the direction of the access door. Through his open windows he can smell blood, and that weird chemical.  
  
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is on Matt’s roof.  
  
The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen is in fact trying Matt’s roof-access door, but it’s locked tonight. The Devil makes a soft noise and Matt feels an unexpected pang of sympathy; that sounds like a guy who’s just had his last hope crap out on him. Matt has made that noise.  
  
There’s a sound of sliding next to the door; the Devil leaned on the wall and now can’t stay standing. Matt supposes it could be a trap, but the smell of blood is heavy enough that he’s inclined to think not. And since no one ever claimed that Matt was good at looking before he leaped, he grabs his cane and slips his feet into sneakers. He takes the stairs too quietly for anyone but him to hear it and spends a good thirty seconds slowly turning the deadbolt latch. The Devil’s breathing isn’t good, reminds Matt of the last time he had a bad cold, but the man’s heart is steady, if slightly rapid.  
  
When the door’s unlocked Matt stands to the side, takes a breath, turns the knob and shoves. It swings open. Nothing flies through the space and the Devil’s vitals don’t change. The chemical smell is a little stronger here. Matt waves his cane across the open doorway. Still nothing.  
  
He decides to risk it. The thing is, he’s concentrating so hard on making sure the Devil isn’t bait in a trap that he’s crouching in front of the man, feeling for the wound he knows is there, before it really registers what’s so strange about him.  
  
Matt can smell the man’s suit; leather, glue, and whatever that strange material is that’s probably armor. But he can’t smell the man himself. Because he smells  _just like Matt_. Not as well-washed, and Matt thinks he hasn’t been eating well, but his basic scent is the same.  
  
_OK_ , Matt thinks calmly,  _this is weird_. His searching fingers follow the trickle of blood up under the edge of the cowl-helmet the Devil is wearing. The wound is a long streak back through his hair—which feels exactly like Matt’s hair, and Matt carefully doesn’t think about that. All he can figure is that a bullet went at precisely the right angle to skirt along the Devil’s skull. Unlucky in one way, but then again it didn’t go through his eye, either. And it means the problem here is probably a concussion rather than blood loss  _per se_.  
  
Matt heaves the Devil into a fireman’s carry to get him down into the living room.


	2. Chapter 2

He woke up wearing his own clothes, lying on his own couch, in his own apartment, and at first the malevolent dwarves hammering on the inside of his skull kept him from finding that surprising. His mouth tasted like something had died in it. He tried to push himself up and couldn’t stop the low moan the movement wrung out of him. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a voice from the direction of the kitchen, and he froze. _No, no_ … But the voice wasn’t right, wasn’t Foggy’s, and then it went on dryly, “And since I’m pretty sure I _am_ , how about you lie back down?”

“Shit,” he muttered, and slumped back onto the pillow. The other guy walked towards him and held out a brittle coolness—a glass of water.

“Do you want help with this? You’re dehydrated.” No need to ask how he could tell; it was in the sound of his skin against fabric, in the way his breath rasped.

“Dunno, but either way I need to sit up to drink it,” he said. “Unless you want water all over the sofa.” ‘The sofa’ was probably the best way to phrase it, rather than ‘your sofa’ or ‘my sofa’, or God forbid ‘ _our_ sofa’.

“Right,” the other man, the other _Matt_ , said. The water glass hit the table with a _tap_. “OK, incoming.”

He flinched, because that was what Foggy said—used to say—when he was about to be touched in some unexpected way. Other-Matt had to know he didn’t need the warning. But he didn’t think he could stand to explain why it hurt, so he let it pass without comment.

Movement jarred his head again but it turned out it was a lot easier to sit up when all the important wounds weren’t to his torso. Other-Matt’s hands were steady, but both their heartbeats picked up at the contact. It was weird as hell to not be able to properly smell another person, like Other-Matt was a man-shaped chunk of warm air. When he was sitting up, Other-Matt handed him the glass.

“Can you eat?” Other-Matt asked as he took his first sip. The tissues of his mouth soaked up the water eagerly and he had to stop himself from bolting the whole glass; that would just make him sick, worse than useless.

“Something easy,” he replied. Other-Matt would know what that meant—nothing with a flavor he’d have to _notice_.

“I figured.” Other-Matt sat down in Foggy’s chair and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. His voice was calm enough but there was ready tension in how he held himself. “I’m not gonna start the Q&A until you have some blood sugar, but there will be questions asked. If you are what you seem to be, you know you can’t lie to me. If you aren’t...well, you can’t lie to me. I’ll know.” 

He felt himself grimace ( _and I will be unhappy_ ) and tried to hide the expression in the water glass. It didn’t really matter; their perception wasn’t fine enough for most facial expressions, but he didn’t spend a lot of time with other blind people and his reflexes were based on dealing with the sighted. “Yeah,” he said. “I know you’ll know.” It was an acknowledgement.

Other-Matt nodded. “I’ll make eggs,” he said.

* * *

He hadn’t thought he’d be hungry, but by the time the eggs were done the smell had made him ravenous. Two bites in, Other-Matt had silently handed over his own plate and gone to cook some more. He didn’t actually know how long it had been since the last time he ate and that had been a granola bar while he waited for a few of the Ranskahovs’ men to get into eavesdropping range.

This time around he had the great advantage of knowing where to look, but he was aiming to be a lot more thorough.

In the end he finished off most of a dozen eggs, monitoring his stomach carefully for signs of rebellion. It seemed pretty steady, and he wondered glumly how much of his collapse had been the head wound and how much had been letting himself get too run down. He wasn’t exactly sleeping on silk sheets anymore.

“Do you need to meditate?” Other-Matt asked, when he’d chased down the last few scraps of egg.

“Probably,” he said. “But let’s do the Q&A first.” It didn’t take their senses to hear the impatience in Other-Matt’s voice. He stood up experimentally, decided he could make it to the kitchen and back, and picked up Other-Matt’s plate as well. “Fire away.”

“What’s your name?”

“Matthew Michael Murdock,” he said, wincing a bit at how close he came to saying _Daredevil_ instead, and set the plates in the sink with a clack of ceramic on metal. “My parents were Jonathan and Margaret. I don’t know where my mother is; my dad’s been dead since I was ten. You know this story.”

“You’re me,” Other-Matt said, in a tone that was intended to be skeptical, but he knew it was for show. There were too many things about him that couldn’t be faked.

Well. In a city where aliens had invaded from a hole in the sky (so he’d been reliably informed; he hadn’t been able to sense the hole, though the rocket sleds had made a noise like nothing he’d heard before or since), who knew what was possible? But he didn’t know of any way to fake body odor so comprehensively, to name just one thing. Everything about Other-Matt was familiar, so he had to assume it went both ways.

He slumped back onto the couch. “I’m you,” he agreed. “From about two years from now.”

Other-Matt swallowed. “You’re saying you’re from the future,” he said flatly.

“You know it’s true.”

“I know you _believe_ it,” Other-Matt countered. 

He snapped, “Well, if you’ve got another explanation I’d love to hear it.”

Other-Matt sighed and said, “Point taken. OK. How’d you get here? Or...now.”

“That I can’t tell you,” he said, the burst of emotion fading back into dragging exhaustion. He felt better for having had a decent meal, but he couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt _good_. “By which I mean I don’t actually know.”

“You travelled in time _accidentally_ ,” Other-Matt said, and this time the skepticism was much more real.

“I was fighting,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter with whom.” It wasn’t going to matter if he had anything to say about it. Fisk first, and then there’d be time to worry about Elektra, keeping her safe, _alive_ , with her help he could stop the Hand. Even Stick would be all right, for all the old bastard wouldn’t appreciate it. “We...the building above us was rigged to explode and I just had to…never mind.” He blinked against tears though he knew Other-Matt would smell them. “When it came down I was knocked out. I woke up in the basement of the construction site where that building isn’t yet. Took me a while to realize the date was wrong.” He’d hidden all day, headed for home, and almost walked in on Other-Matt and Foggy in his apartment. He’d heard Foggy’s voice from two buildings over, complaining about their boss from L&Z.

At least he and Foggy had parted well. He had to hold on to that.

“I don’t know what happened,” he went on. “I don’t know how it happened. But since I’m here...since I’m here I thought...this way you don’t have to. You can have your life, the way we thought it was going to be.”

Other-Matt was quiet for a long time. He found himself listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, reassuringly familiar. Finally, Other-Matt said, “Or I could help.”

“Matt,” he said, and the name was strange in his mouth. “I know how it feels, alright? I _know_. I know what it’s like to hear it and not be able to help. But what you’re doing is important too. Trying to be Matt Murdock and D—the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen at the same time, it didn’t—go well. Trying to be _just_ Matt Murdock, after I knew what was happening without me? That was even worse.” He heard Other-Matt smother a question and smiled, small and bitter. “This way we don’t have to choose. You can make a difference out in the open, and I can help behind the scenes, and we don’t have to choose.” Other-Matt wouldn’t show up in the office with bruises he couldn’t explain and dark circles under his eyes from lack of sleep. Foggy wouldn’t have to worry, would never even have to know. Karen wouldn’t be arrested, threatened, nearly killed, and whatever it was that had haunted her would never happen. Other-Matt would never lie three-quarters dead on the floor of this room, wondering if he was going to wake up in a hospital bed, a jail cell, or at all. Mrs. Cardenas, Ben Urich, they would live. He could _fix it_. He could fix everything.

“I don’t like being benched, and you should know that,” Other-Matt said.

“It’s not being benched,” he said, trying to put his conviction into his voice. “It’s playing full-time in a different game.”

Other-Matt didn’t reply immediately, and that was the only reason he caught it. He cocked his head to concentrate and heard Other-Matt’s tiny indrawn breath over the familiar rhythm of Foggy’s stride/heartbeat/breathing, climbing the stairs. “Shit,” he said again, with more feeling.

“Bedroom,” said Other-Matt decisively. “We’ll have time to talk about this later but I’m not going to make any irrevocable choices in the next minute.”

“Where’s my suit?” He could smell it, but there weren’t any piles of the correct density in the living room.

“It’s in there. Just go lie down, you need the rest anyway.”

Like he’d be able to rest with Foggy right there, but his host didn’t need to worry about that so he just went, grabbing for the sheet he’d been lying on as he did. No need to make it obvious that there’d been someone sleeping on the couch.

In the bedroom he checked to make sure all the pieces of the suit were there as Other-Matt slid the door closed. Foggy’s feet tramped up the last flight of stairs, his heart beating hard from the climb. He had...food—bacon, pastries, and pancakes. And hot coffee, from the good coffee shop.

Foggy knocked and called, “It’s me, I have food.” Other-Matt went padding out to the door; in the bedroom, it seemed prudent to lie down on the floor on the far side of the bed, just in case. Foggy had been known before to jokingly check his bedroom for hidden girls. With the sheet to keep the texture of the flooring at bay, it was tolerable enough, especially once he snaked an arm up to pull down one of the extra pillows.

“Hey,” said Other-Matt as he unlocked the front door. “No offense, but I wasn’t expecting you this early.”

“Let me run that through my Murdock-to-English translator,” Foggy said cheerfully. There was a rustle and slosh as he shoved the cardboard tray of coffee cups into Other-Matt’s chest. “Oh, Foggy, thank you for coming over on this lovely Saturday morning to make sure I ate something now that the bagels, which you _also_ provided, are gone!” 

He closed his eyes, not that it did anything at all to help. Other-Matt said dryly, “Yeah, that’s what I meant to say all right. You do know I’m a better cook than you, right?”

 _Oh, **shit**_ , he thought, and Other-Matt’s pulse skipped just the same as Foggy wandered towards the kitchen. “Objection,” said Foggy over his shoulder, setting his bag on the counter. “Counsel has not shown...Matt.” Foggy’s voice slid into glee. “Matt! Did you have someone over last night?”

“Um,” said Other-Matt eloquently. Behind the bed he resisted the urge to bang his head on the floor, both because Foggy might hear it and because it would _hurt_.

“Because I’m counting two plates here,” Foggy rolled on. “Was she hot? Do I know her?”

“I keep telling you I have no way of knowing if you’d think a woman is hot,” Other-Matt said. This was not, strictly speaking, true, unless he met her without Foggy present; the reason Foggy thought all the women he’d dated were hot was because he was using Foggy’s judgement about it. “And no, I did not have a woman over last night. I just didn’t wash all the dishes yet.”

“OK,” Foggy said skeptically, but he was opening his bag, which meant he was just teasing. “But let the record show I’m gonna get all the juicy details eventually.”

“A gentleman never tells,” Other-Matt said gravely, and Foggy laughed.

* * *

After about twenty minutes he swallowed hard and forced his breathing into the rhythm that would take him down into meditation. It wasn’t right for him to sit and listen to Foggy when Foggy didn’t know he was here, and it wasn’t productive to torture himself pining away for something he couldn’t have. He might as well concentrate on getting back on his feet. At the very least he’d gotten something solid to eat, which could only help.

Lying on his back it was hard to get into the proper mindset, but he didn’t want to sit up. Foggy’s comforting voice wound around his thoughts but the meaning drifted out of his grasp. He fell over the border between relaxation and sleep without really noticing.


	3. Chapter 3

Matt’s shoulders relax a bit when his guest’s breathing/heartbeat ramps down into sleep; he’s never been told he snores so that’s no risk and God knows the man can use some rest. Meditation would be better, but Matt will take what he can get. He makes a mental note to get some more water down him when he wakes up, too.

He and Foggy spend a pleasant hour or so wrangling lists of paperwork and dividing up the chores between them—starting a legal practice in New York City is complex, who knew?—and demolishing the breakfast Foggy brought. Foggy brings out his periodic good-natured complaint about the amount Matt eats, and Matt reminds him again that he’s offered to teach Foggy to box roughly quarterly since they met. “Exercise, my old nemesis!” Foggy exclaims, waving the remnants of a bear claw, and Matt laughs because that’s a new one.

Then he catches a sound he really doesn’t like—was that a gasp of fear?—off at the very edge of his hearing, and concentrating on it must make his face do something because Foggy says, “Matt, you OK?”

Matt takes a moment to think it over and says, “Sorry, Fogs, I think maybe I’m getting a headache.”

“Bad one?” Foggy says, dropping into brisk sympathy instantly.

“I’m not sick to my stomach yet,” Matt says. He doesn’t get the aura as an early-warning system—or maybe he does, but it doesn’t change the world on fire so he can’t tell—so feeling sick is his usual first indicator before the headache itself descends. He feels a little guilty about lying to Foggy about this, but there’s no denying he needs to keep his interesting guest on the down-low until they can work out what exactly they’re going to do with him. “Still, maybe I’d better lie back down. I can work on some of the electronic forms this evening.” His laptop can find typable fields for him. Foggy gets to do all the paper forms; Matt’s handwriting, so he’s told, looks like it belongs to a third-grader (for obvious reasons), and a not-very-coordinated one at that. 

Foggy nods and gets to his feet. “I’ll email you your list so you can print it out,” he says, his voice pitched a little softer than usual in deference to Matt’s supposed oncoming migraine. “You better be ready to go Monday morning when the clerks’ offices start opening. If we’re going after this insanity we’re gonna hit the ground running!”

“It’s not insanity,” Matt protests, smirking. “Think positive.”

“I’m positive this is crazy,” Foggy says promptly, so of course Matt has to smack him a little, both of them giggling like children. It only takes a minute to shove the various empty containers and coffee cups back into the bag Foggy brought them in, and Foggy leaves, after extracting a promise that Matt will call him if he needs anything.

Once Foggy’s gone, Matt goes into the bedroom, grabs a pillow, and throws it onto his guest’s legs. As expected, this wakes him immediately and his response is to try to hit something, but he takes less than a second to orient himself. It’s a bit of work to persuade him up onto the actual bed for more sleep, but Matt’s got logic on his side—more comfort means better rest—and he thinks his mysterious double might be low on the willpower to object right now.

Matt goes back out into the living room to get started on his share of the forms, and once more his guest tries to meditate and falls asleep instead. Matt shrugs, and keeps typing.

* * *

The day passes uneventfully. Matt’s guest staggers to the bathroom once, but otherwise he pretty much sleeps. As the sun begins to set, his breathing changes and Matt goes and orders food from the Thai place that gives you extra fried banana if you order over the minimum and times it so that it arrives just about as he wakes up properly. He emerges from the bedroom, still wearing Matt’s sweats, as Matt’s making up two identical plates—it’s certainly possible that his tastes have changed significantly in two years, but Matt doesn’t think that’s how smart money bets.

“I should go,” is the first thing he says, even as he’s accepting the plate. Lemongrass and coconut make the room fragrant.

“You should eat first,” Matt says mildly. “And we should decide what we’re going to call each other.” He’s a little worried about how easy it is to accept that this person really is who he says he is, but what other explanation is there? As far as Matt knows, it’s flatly impossible to fool him about someone’s identity for more than a second or two. He may yet have the screaming meemies over this (OK, that’s not really a _maybe_ ), but it’s going to be because _holy shit time travel_ , not because he doubts who he’s dealing with.

“We’re not going to call each other anything,” his double says around a mouthful of rice. “I’m going to leave and you’ll never have to talk to me again.”

Matt knows intellectually that the other man can’t see it, but he rolls his eyes anyway. “Explain to me how you think that’s going to work. Even assuming I agree that it’s better for me to not get directly involved in what you do, we can help each other. Having one person on...each side of the fence could be very useful, and if I can think of all the ways that’s true, so can you.” 

There’s a beat of relative silence and then his double says, “Mike. I’ll be Mike and you’ll be Matt.” His laugh doesn’t sound sincere. “She didn’t know my middle name, just said I reminded her of her ex. He also had a lot of secrets, apparently.”

“Who?”

“You’ll never have to meet her.”

Matt files that tidbit away under things to investigate later. “And what do we do if someone sees us together? I can’t exactly claim to have a twin.” His life story was front-page news when he was nine; last time he checked he was still the number one result on Google for “Hell’s Kitchen blinded”. Anyone who cares to do even the most cursory digging could easily find out he’s an only child.

“We could say I lived with our mother and you didn’t know about me,” says Mike (yeah, that’s gonna be weird for a while) dryly.

“Which will work until the first time someone asks you to read a computer screen or identify a color,” Matt replies, “or notices you can’t make eye contact.” He doesn’t really have a good grasp of what ‘eye contact’ means anymore, though he remembers it being important when he was a kid.

“Dyslexia, colorblindness, and autism,” Mike says.

Matt laughs incredulously. “I think we’re just going to have to be careful.” He shrugs one shoulder, taking care to make the movement large enough for Mike to perceive. “It’s not like people can sneak up on us.”

“You’d be amazed,” Mike says, but Matt can tell he agrees. They can’t explain this away, and trying would only make them look shifty. If anyone gets a good look at the both of them together, they’ll basically have no choice but to come clean.

“On the other hand it’s going to be very useful if someone thinks outside the box enough to get past the blindness,” Matt muses. “It’s not hard to establish an alibi when I can be miles away.”

“You’re not getting any more involved in this than you have to,” says Mike, and Matt bristles.

“I can take care of myself.”

Mike huffs a laugh and says, “That’s what I thought until I almost bled to death.” He gestures at the bedroom door. “I’d be dead if Foggy hadn’t found me.”

Matt pulls in a startled breath. “Foggy knows?” 

“My Foggy does. He was...pissed. More pissed than I’d ever seen him,” Mike says. “He didn’t understand why I never told him.” Matt nods. He’s come close to telling Foggy so many times, but something always holds him back. Caution, worry, maybe it’s just that he wants someone who thinks of him as only _Matt_ , he doesn’t know. Elektra knew, and look how that turned out. Mike goes on, “It almost broke us. I think it did break us. It didn’t matter what good I did, after that it was all fruit of the poisonous tree for him. We patched it up for a while but then...I let him down. We were in the middle of a case and something came up from the night side and I let him down. ” Mike sighs. “Besides, he was safer away from me. I wound him up and told him to leave and he was mad enough to do it.”

Mike doesn’t say _I miss him_ , but he doesn’t need to. 

Matt can imagine thinking it would be better for Foggy to be far away from him; he can imagine all sorts of ways the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen thing could have gone wrong. He can even imagine _how_ he’d go about driving Foggy away if he ever needed to—they know each other's buttons and Matt’s well aware of his own capacity for venom. What he _can’t_ imagine is getting to a place where that goal is anything close to acceptable. Foggy’s one of the foundation blocks of Matt’s life.

“I should go,” Mike says again, breaking into Matt’s thoughts.

“You should stay the night,” Matt says. “You need the rest.” Mike still isn’t moving right.

“I have a bed,” Mike says, sounding a little nettled.

Matt doesn’t laugh openly. “Tell me you’ve got decent sheets on it and I’ll take that seriously.” He hears Mike’s teeth clack together as his jaw clenches. “A good breakfast won’t hurt either.”

Mike snorts and says, “I remember what my money situation was like at this point. You can’t afford to feed me.”

“I can afford one more breakfast,” Matt retorts. If it gets a little tight, well, he won’t enjoy missing a meal but better him than Mike. It’s not like he has a lot of fat to lose, but Mike’s edging out of _lean_ and into _gaunt_.

“Fine,” Mike says. “Fine, I’ll just...I’m gonna take a shower.”

“I’m going out to buy a burner cell,” Matt says. “I’ll put the number in yours.” He’d found the bare-bones flip phone in the suit while he was figuring out how to take the thing off Mike the night before.

“Fine,” Mike repeats. He’s not pleased, but Matt kinda fails to care.

For insurance he takes Mike’s boots with him when he goes out.

* * *

In the morning Matt feeds Mike as much as he’ll eat and sends him off with his suit and one of Matt’s spare flat sheets bundled away in the gym bag with the strap he keeps meaning to fix properly. Then Matt packs up his laptop and goes to Mass. He hasn’t been going regularly, but he likes Father Lantom. He wonders if Mike’s got a priest, if he’s been confessing; it sort of seems prudent, given the risks he’s been running.

After Mass, Matt stands on the sidewalk outside the church and calls Foggy.

“Hey, buddy,” Foggy says, sounding pretty awake for before—though not very long before—noon on a Sunday. “Your head stopped exploding?”

“Yeah,” Matt says, with a twinge of guilt. “I think I got my chunk of the first round done, but I want you to check it for me before we submit anything.” He hesitates, and then plunges on, “And there’s something I need to tell you.”

“OK, well, that’s not ominous at all,” says Foggy, still good-natured but Matt knows he’s caught that this could be serious. “Where are you?”

“On my way to your place. Ten minutes.”

“I’mma need coffee for this, I can tell.”

Matt smiles and asks, “Do you want me to stop?”

“Nah, I’ll just make some. Should be done about when you get here.”

“OK. Be there soon,” Matt says, and they hang up. Matt takes the rest of the walk at what he thinks is about his normal unassisted pace as the conflicting urges to dawdle so he doesn’t have to do this and to hurry and get it over with balance out.

Foggy’s building is nicer than Matt’s, and as a result he has less floor space, but a working elevator. Matt stands in it and manages not to fidget on the short trip up. Foggy’s standing in his door with it cracked, and opens it when he sees Matt coming. The smell of coffee drifts around him, one of the places where Matt’s actually managed to convert him; Foggy says Matt made him into a coffee snob.

“Lay it on me,” Foggy says as he’s closing the door behind Matt.

Matt sets his laptop case on Foggy’s coffee table and folds his cane, aware he’s stalling. He takes a deep breath. “I should have told you this before I let you leave Landeman and Zach with me,” he says.

Foggy makes a mock-offended noise and says, “Matt, buddy, you don’t _let_ me do anything. I’m a grown man. I make my own decisions.” He picks up the coffee pot and pours. “I gotta tell you, though, this isn’t getting any _less_ ominous, so how ‘bout we cut to the chase?” He’s doctoring their coffee with hands that don’t shake, but there’s tension in the muscles of his shoulders and his heart’s a little too fast.

Matt breathes in again, takes his glasses off. “The accident that blinded me,” he says. He’s thought so many times about how to say this, polished it, refined the speech like a closing argument, and now he can’t remember any of it. “It didn’t just blind me.”

“OK,” Foggy says.

“That thing about when one sense goes, the others get stronger? It’s a myth.”

Foggy says, “Yeah, you’ve mentioned.” He holds out the coffee mug and says, “Cup of joe at—”

Matt plucks the cup from his hand, and Foggy stops talking. His heart skips.

“It’s a myth, but not for me,” Matt says. He feels like he’s jumping from a high place, knowing that the landing is there but maybe this time is the time he’s _wrong_. “Whatever was in the stuff that blinded me, it made the rest of my senses stronger. I can hear everything. I can smell everything. You make fun of my sheets but I can’t sleep on plain cotton, it’s like sandpaper on my skin. I feel heat, air currents, changes in pressure. I am really blind, Foggy, I swear I am, I can prove it, but I’m...I don’t see the world like you do, but I do see it.”

Foggy says nothing for long enough that Matt feels dizzy. Maybe the landing really isn’t there. But when Foggy finally speaks, he sounds pretty calm. “OK, there are going to be a lot of questions, starting with how you think you’re gonna prove a negative, but this is the most important one,” he says. “Why did you think this was going to make me angry?”

Matt’s feet touch down.

“I’ve been lying to you,” he says when he can.

“Yeah, and that’s not great, I’m probably gonna want to yell at you a little for that,” Foggy says. “But your face, Matt. You look like you’re waiting for the firing squad.”

Matt opens his mouth and realizes he can’t think of anything to say. Mike’s misery was all but palpable, but Matt can’t exactly explain that, can he? “I just,” he says, and flounders to a halt. From what Mike said, _his_ version of Foggy (in the back of his mind, Matt boggles at the concept of more than one Foggy) found out under traumatic circumstances, and found out about Mike being the Devil at the same time. That probably didn’t help. “I don’t want you to think I’ve been using you for...for _cover_ ,” he says at last. Foggy’s waiting patiently and Matt kind of wants to kiss him for it—more than he usually wants to kiss him. “The things you do, they aren’t all necessary, but they’re all helpful. I can walk down the street on my own, even without my cane, but it’s _hard_. Having someone I can count on…” He stops again because he’s not supposed to need anyone, he’s not supposed to _need help_.

“Matt,” Foggy says again, carefully, like he’s trying not to spook a stray dog; Matt wonders what the hell his face is doing to pull that reaction. Foggy sets his coffee cup down on the floor and says, “I’m gonna hug you now, buddy, so brace yourself.”

Matt laughs, and if it comes out a little wet, Foggy doesn’t say anything. Foggy’s arms are warm and familiar; Matt’s aware that their relationship has always been a little more tactile than average for male friends, but he’s not complaining. He can’t quite relax into it the way he’d like to—there is still a revelation to go here—but at least they’re past the first hurdle. After a few seconds Foggy steps back and braces his hands on Matt’s shoulders. “OK. Now explain how you’re going to prove you _can’t_ see. I mean, I’ve seen people flash lights in your eyes and nothing happens, so…”

“Well, there’s that,” says Matt. “But what I was planning was to cover up my face and have you throw things at me.”

Foggy gives a startled laugh and says, “No, seriously.” Matt raises his eyebrows. “Seriously?” There’s a pause. “OK, this I have _got_ to see.”


	4. Chapter 4

His hideout wasn’t that far away—there was a limit to how far apart any two locations in Hell’s Kitchen _could_ be—but he went about getting there carefully and as circumspectly as he could, which was a little more difficult with daytime traffic on the streets and sidewalks. He rarely went out during the day anymore. For that matter, he’d talked to Matt more in the past thirty-some hours than he’d talked to anyone else, total, in all the time he’d been here; threatening lowlifes and interrogating thugs hardly counted.  
  
He took the roof entrance to prove to himself that he could, though climbing made his head spin. He landed hard and winced. The couple in the apartment below mostly ignored what small noises he accidentally made but a thud like that couldn’t be explained away as rats. Fortunately they seemed to be out. He slung the gym bag onto his camp cot and sat next to it, running his hands back through his hair.  
  
Mike (it was hard, hard to think of himself that way) didn’t really remember deciding to go to his, or rather  _Matt’s_ , apartment on Friday night, which was a measure of how disoriented he’d been. He’d just hurt, and the apartment was still the home he tried to go to when he hurt. It hadn’t been smart, but it was done now and he had to deal with it.  
  
He sighed and stood up. At least he wouldn’t have to sleep on Goodwill sheets anymore. He’d been furnishing his tiny space with castoffs and thrift-store rejects, saving most of the money he took from criminals to feed himself. The camp cot was probably his single most expensive possession, apart from the armor.  
  
When the sheet was tucked in, Mike arranged himself on the floor to meditate. He’d rest until dark and then go pick up the threads of his investigation into the Ranskahovs. With any luck they thought they’d killed him and their guard would be down.

* * *

He got dressed after the sun went down, concentrating on feeling his body, where it was still weak. He was going out regardless, but he had to know what to compensate for. The list changed from night to night as old injuries healed and new ones accumulated, but it never went away entirely. He didn’t have time to let it. This weekend was the longest rest he’d had in a good three months.  
  
He went out onto the rooftops intending to make the trek to the Ranskahovs’ bogus taxi garage, but two jumps later realized he was heading in the wrong direction. He paused in the lee of an air exchanger, his hands tightening into fists, and breathed out sharply.   
  
Then he set off again, on the short route to Foggy’s roof.  
  
He didn’t stop; that would be stalking. He just passed over Foggy’s building, moving as fast as he could without alarming Foggy’s upstairs neighbor. The insulation in the roof was completely inadequate and the poor lady didn’t need to hear unexpected footsteps over her head. Foggy was cheerfully narrating last summer’s Justice League movie and Mike squelched a pang of jealousy. It was only logical that he be the one to stay away; his feelings didn’t change that.  
  
From Foggy’s it was a short trip to Claire’s building. She wasn’t home, and Mike kept moving. Karen’s building required descending to street level and he kept to the alleys. She was unpacking a cardboard box and muttering to herself about  _dumbass Past Me, where is the damn thing?_  She’d been at Union Allied for about a month. He hadn’t decided yet how to introduce himself, and he didn’t have a lot more time if he wanted to build some trust before she found the file.  
  
He moved a little slower as he left Karen’s, to give himself a few more seconds to decide. Danny wasn’t back in New York yet, but Jessica’s address was easy to find and he’d tracked down Luke’s bar with a little digging. He knew it was stupid; they were both emphatically capable of taking care of themselves and besides, they’d survived this year without him the first time around. For that matter, so had Foggy, Karen, and Claire, but Mike was paranoid about butterfly effects.  
  
_You’re paranoid about more than that, buddy_ , his internal Foggy murmured, and Mike sighed. So far everything seemed to be the same except for direct results of his actions, but he didn’t know how long that would last. He didn’t have the faintest idea of where to even start figuring it out, either. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could research at the library, and asking direct questions about the results of time travel seemed likely to mean fighting his way out of an involuntary committal.  
  
Mike turned resolutely towards the Ranskahovs’ garage, and moved into a run.

* * *

He spent a lot of time worrying about it, but he literally could not come up with any way of introducing himself to Karen that wouldn’t scare her. He had to keep his face covered in case she ever met Matt, which meant he couldn’t approach her in public; demonstrating that he knew where she lived would be alarming; following her down the street, well, it didn’t take a genius to figure out why that might be a problem.  
  
Finally he compromised, about a week after his breakfast with Matt, and staked out her route home from the 42nd Street station so that he at least wouldn’t be skulking down alleys behind her. It meant going out in daylight and Mike wore civilian clothes and carried his helmet in the gym bag Matt had given him until he heard the tap of Karen’s heels approaching. Her perfume was light and pleasant, inexpensive with notes of honeysuckle, and Mike ignored the memory of her lips against his as he pulled the helmet over his head.  
  
The block wasn’t busy, one of the reasons he’d chosen it, and the timing worked out near-perfectly; there was no one facing their way as Karen started past the mouth of the alley Mike stood in. “Excuse me, are you Karen Page?”   
  
She stopped and turned to face him, taking a reflexive step back, wary if not frightened. He was carefully too far back to grab her, but he knew she’d seen the helmet when her pulse stuttered and sped up.  
  
“Holy  _shit_  you’re the Devil,” she said.  
  
“Yeah,” he said, not letting his lips twist. “Look, I know it’s a shock but I just wanted to ask you a quick question.” He paused and tried a smile. “If you’re Karen Page?”  
  
In the pause Karen took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m Karen Page,” she said, her voice commendably even, though her heart was pounding. Her hand went into the pocket where her keys rattled. “I’m also supposed to call my mom in half an hour, so talk fast.”  
  
It was hard to tell a lie when someone was so startled, but Mike didn’t need to hear her heart to know she was threatening him, letting him know she’d be missed; as far as he was aware, Karen’s mother was dead and had been for years. He fell back another half a step. “Nothing big,” he said. “You work for Union Allied, right?”  
  
Karen’s heartbeat spiked and settled. “Yes.”  
  
“I’m looking into them,” Mike said. “I don’t mean to alarm you, Ms. Page, but there’s something...not quite right going on. I’m not equipped to do much more digging than I already have, but—”  
  
“But I am?” Karen asked.  
  
“I’d really rather you didn’t,” Mike said sincerely. “If it’s as big as I think, getting caught looking in the wrong places could be dangerous.”  
  
“Then what  _do_  you want?”  
  
“Keep your eyes open, that’s all. If something you don’t feel good about happens to cross your desk, let me know.” He could keep her safe long enough to blow the Union Allied data to the  _Bulletin_ , and after that there’d be no point in going after her. She wouldn’t have to meet Matt and Foggy over the table in an interrogation room.  
  
Karen didn’t reply for a second and Mike wondered if she was biting her lip. “How do I get in touch with you?” she asked at last. “Masking tape on the window?”  
  
Mike huffed a laugh; it sounded like a reference to something. “I’ll give you my number. If you need to contact me, buy a burner cell and use it to call me.” He held out the slip of paper with his burner’s number printed on it. Karen darted forward to snatch it from his hand.  
  
“I’m not promising anything,” she said. Mike nodded. She swallowed and said, “Why do you care? I thought you went after...muggers. Burglars. Why are you looking into a construction company?”  
  
Mike shrugged. “They’re not good for my city, Ms. Page. That’s all I need to know.”  
  
“ _Your_  city,” she said in affronted disbelief.  
  
“That’s what I like to call it. Now I shouldn’t keep you. Just please, be safe.” He backed away from her as he spoke, hearing her grip on her keys loosen.  
  
“I’d say you too but I’ve read the stories,” Karen said. Mike grinned at her.  
  
“I’ll do my best,” he said, and leapt for the fire escape. Hauling himself onto it strained his ribs but it was worth it for Karen’s gasp. He clambered to the roof and out of her sight.  
  
Down in the street, Karen just stood there for a good minute. “Holy shit,” she said at last, and turned for home. Mike listened to her go until the sound of her heels faded into the background noise.


	5. Chapter 5

Foggy and Matt do a lot of paperwork over the next few weeks. They open a business checking account and start the hunt for office space they can afford. Foggy doesn’t complain about Matt’s insistence that they stay in the Kitchen, because Foggy’s a practical guy at heart and he knows what the Battle of Manhattan did to rents—one of the creatures the news insisted on referring to as ‘space whales’ had screwed up the infrastructure but good when it crashed, which is why Foggy’s parents live on Long Island now. Even with Tony Stark’s charitable contributions, rebuilding isn’t speedy.  
  
The other thing Foggy spends a lot of time doing is throwing things at Matt. Not when anyone else is around; Foggy grasps the concept of a cover story perfectly well and also doesn’t want casual observers to think he’s a jerk. But when they’re alone, Foggy throws things and laughs in delight when Matt catches them. He insists they’re going to start an office softball team and is undeterred by Matt pointing out that two people isn’t enough for a team.  
  
(Foggy did yell at him a little for hiding his senses for so long. Matt just nodded along and thanked God repeatedly. Foggy’s creeped out that Matt can hear when he’s lying but he seems to have accepted that it’s not something Matt can turn off. Matt still hasn’t told him about Mike, because that is probably one weirdness too far, and it’s not Matt’s secret to share anyway.)  
  
It doesn’t take long to figure out that even with the rents in Hell’s Kitchen they’ve been thinking a little too big, but Matt’s sure they’ll find something. They’re about halfway through their list of realtors with available properties when the story about the Ranskahov brothers breaks.  
  
Organized crime in Hell’s Kitchen is a little more complicated than the Kitchen Irish and the Mafia these days. The Ranskahovs are a pair of Russians who were _allegedly_ running a human trafficking ring; both of them showed up semi-conscious and duct-taped to within an inch of their lives at the Fifteenth, with thumb drives in their shirt pockets holding all sorts of lovely incriminating evidence. The  _Times_ , the  _Bugle_  and the  _Bulletin_  all got copies too—courtesy of the Devil of Hell's Kitchen.  
  
Over drinks one evening, Foggy says thoughtfully, “I wish we were up and running, we could take their case.” His TV is on and the CNN commentator is discussing the number of guys who’ve been arrested in the last two days; it may be a local bust, but ‘white slavery in New York City’ is a story with legs.  
  
Matt snorts. “I’ll grant you they can pay, but you’re kind of missing the point of helping innocent people,” he says. They’re side by side on Foggy’s couch, which Matt suspects he’s going to end up sleeping on rather than argue with Foggy about why he can walk home alone. It’s leather, and pretty comfortable. A few blocks away he hears a siren and hopes Foggy can’t feel his wince. It’s not his job. They agreed on that.  
  
“No, think about it,” Foggy insists. “We are damn good, my friend, and we could make sure they got the absolute  _best_  defense. So that when their asses got nailed to the wall, it would  _stick_. No appeals for those douchebags.” Foggy is sometimes a little less concerned about where money comes from than Matt would like, but he also has Very Strong Feelings about people being coerced into sex work. “That’s a case I’d be happy to lose.” He takes a decisive swig of his beer.  
  
Matt drinks from his too in the hopes of disguising his expression, which he’s sure is absolutely besotted, and leans a little more heavily into Foggy’s side. He’s maybe a  _little_  drunk, which is another reason he shouldn’t go running out into the night searching for thugs to punch. “Maybe we should build up our rep first,” he says.   
  
Foggy scoffs magnificently and says, “Don’t be silly. We’d get great word of mouth from it.” A thoughtful pause. “And since that’s the only advertising we can afford…”  
  
Matt laughs aloud and holds out his bottle for Foggy to clink.

* * *

It’s well after dawn the next day by the time Matt gets home, so he figures it’s safe to call. Mike’s phone drops to voicemail, the pre-recorded default message, and Matt says, “I heard about the Russians. Let me know if you have anything you need me to look into.”  
  
He doesn’t get a call back, but he wasn’t really expecting to.

* * *

They find an office. It’s well-placed, about halfway between Foggy’s apartment and Matt’s, and even in a semi-respectable building. There’s a pink-sheet stock broker next door and a hardware store downstairs, but at least the elevator works, to Foggy’s vocal relief. They spend a week or so furnishing the place, insofar as they can on their budget—Matt doesn’t end up missing any meals, but there’s a little more ramen than he’d prefer—and Foggy writes their names on a piece of paper to stick to the door. He assures Matt that it looks “stunningly professional” and Matt doesn’t have to hear his heartbeat to know he should laugh.  
  
The night before they’re due to officially open their practice, Matt goes to the gym. He slings his bag onto the bench and starts wrapping his hands, thinking idly that he should really mention to Foggy that “go to the gym” means this, not some echo-bright, air-conditioned space with the bounce of mirrors on every wall and a lap pool. Fogwell’s is sweat and blood and canvas, bare brick walls and ductwork hanging from the high ceiling, the sand in the bags and the gurgling of old plumbing.  
  
Matt warms up on the heavy bag. At least, that’s what he intends to do. He’s not even planning on going beyond plain boxing. But settling into the rhythm of jab and punch lets his mind calm, and his sense-net casts wider without him really noticing, so he hears it when the woman in the building two doors down slaps her boyfriend’s face and snarls  _You fucking useless piece of shit_. Matt stops cold and barely catches the bag before it swings into him as the man says  _Liddy, I’m sorry, I didn’t think_ —and Liddy says  _You never think_ , and Matt...doesn’t know what he could do. They aren’t on the street; he can’t go charging into a stranger’s apartment on the strength of something he shouldn’t be able to hear, and anyway it’s not his  _job_ , it’s  _Mike’s_  job to stop this kind of thing, except Mike’s not.  
  
Liddy doesn’t beat her boyfriend unconscious or anything; she hits him twice more but they’re open-handed slaps, not punches, and Matt hardly notices (except that he notices every fucking second) because he’s busy kicking the heavy bag so hard he bursts a seam. He keeps going long after Liddy’s stormed out of the apartment and her boyfriend’s gone to take a shower, so shielded by the sound of the water that no one (except Matt) can hear him crying. Matt keeps going until his legs shake with exhaustion and his knuckles are sore and bruised-feeling, and isn’t that going to be fun to explain?  
  
When he finally has to stop he bends over, hands on his knees, panting hard, and shouts “ _Fuck!_ ” into the cavern of the empty gym. He keeps that position for nine seconds while the broadening echos teach him again the shape of the room, the rot of the rafters, the absorption capacity of his skin. 

* * *

It’s Friday afternoon by the time all the papers are signed and all the utilities are turned on. They unlock the office door ceremonially and walk in together. Matt knows it’s not exactly a surprise that no one walks through it, but they stand there like dopes for about a minute before Foggy says, “OK, let’s unpack.”  
  
They take a break mid-evening to eat some delivery Chinese and then retire to their separate offices. Well after dark, Foggy’s phone rings. Matt doesn’t bother to hide that he’s listening as Foggy says, “Hey, buddy.”  
  
“Homicide,” says Brett Mahoney’s voice, and Matt tilts his head back a little. Foggy’s gonna be insufferable about this. “Female suspect found at the scene. Definitely qualifies as interesting.”  
  
“She even charged yet?” Foggy asks.  
  
“Assistant DA hasn’t made the call yet.”  
  
“You have a name on the suspect?”  
  
“Yeah, Page. Karen Page.”  
  
“OK, if she asks for a lawyer, tell her we’re on our way,” says Foggy. “Thanks, man, we owe you.”  
  
“You know it,” Brett says, and hangs up. Matt grabs for his jacket and cane.  
  
Foggy slips his phone back into his pocket and claps his hands to rub them together. “Matty!” he calls, turning, and startles when he sees Matt coming out of his office with one arm in his jacket. “Whoa. You could hear that?”  
  
“Yeah,” says Matt. “Let’s go.”


	6. Chapter 6

Later, Mike would have time for plenty of Monday-morning quarterbacking about how he should have realized what would happen; at the time it was mostly a blur of cursing.  
  
He should have remembered that Karen had had the file for almost a week before she talked to Daniel Fisher about it; that she’d had to go home at least once, to hide her copy.  
  
He should have known she’d want to check and make sure the weird file she’d found was really as problematic as she thought. He should have been able to hear it in her voice when his burner phone rang and she set up a meeting, at a diner in the far southeast corner of the Kitchen.  
  
He should have staked out the Union Allied building instead of spending the evening mapping Gao’s courier routes.  
  
He didn’t even realize anything had gone wrong until Karen was late to the meeting. Karen hated to be late, even when it wasn’t her fault, and by twenty minutes past the appointed time Mike knew she was in trouble; she’d have called him otherwise.   
  
He made it to her apartment just in time to watch her being bundled into the back of a police car. She was crying in swallowed gasps, the iron reek of blood perceptible from across the street and past a bulging Dumpster.  
  
“God _damn_ it,” Mike muttered. There wasn’t any point in following the patrol car to the precinct, but he did it anyway.

* * *

Matt and Foggy arrived, and were shown into the interrogation room. Mike had to focus hard to hear them, but the words were comfortingly familiar,  _about seven hours_  and  _I didn’t do this_  and, maybe most important,  _I believe you_. Mike remembered letting Foggy take the lead on calming Karen down, reconciling her to going to the central lockup.  
  
The central lockup where she’d be attacked and nearly strangled.  
  
He didn’t have a choice but to let it happen; making her into a fugitive wouldn’t help her case and he wasn’t positive he could have managed it anyway. But he could follow her there, and listen until her heartbeat submerged in the sea of other prisoners, and breathe out hard when she yelled for help and saved herself instead. That, he could do.

* * *

It took most of the day to get Karen released into Matt and Foggy’s custody. For one thing, no one had even called them until nearly noon, which Mike was sure was (had been) the influence of Fisk’s infiltration of the NYPD. The foot-dragging was all for appearance’s sake; everyone knew that Karen was highly unlikely to be charged, not after someone had tried to stage a cellblock suicide. The DA’s office wasn’t stupid, and Karen was photogenic. A public defender with too many cases and no talent could have gotten her off in trial.  
  
Mike made it back to the building first and tucked himself away in the empty office space at the end of the hall. Odds were high Matt would know he was there—he remembered being on alert when they brought Karen back to the office—but just in case, as the three of them came off the elevator, Mike muttered, “I’m down the hall. Once you’ve got her story we need to talk.”  
  
Karen talked, plans were made, and finally Matt ducked into the hall, ostensibly to use the restroom; Mike followed him. There was no one else in the building, but Mike kept an ear out for Foggy just in case..  
  
“Did you know this was going to happen?” Matt demanded as soon as the door closed. He kept his voice down, but his hands were on his hips and Mike knew perfectly well that he was furious.  
  
“I tried to head it off, but she didn’t tell me she was going to meet Fisher before she came to me,” Mike admitted.   
  
“Damn it,” Matt said. He ran a hand back through his hair and went on more calmly, “She has a copy of the file, doesn’t she?”  
  
“Yeah,” Mike said. “It’s hidden in her apartment, I don’t know exactly where. She’ll deny it and sneak out of your place tonight and go to get it, but the man who killed Fisher will be waiting for her.”  
  
Matt started, “I’ll follow—”  
  
“ _I’ll_  go,” Mike said. “I dealt with him once, I can do it again.” He’d gotten better since fighting Rance the first time. Practice made perfect, after all. “Once I have the drive I’ll drop it and the killer at the  _Bulletin_.”   
  
“Not at the Fifteenth?”  
  
Mike hesitated, but Matt needed to know. “Some of the cops there are dirty, working for the guy who’s behind this. If the  _Bulletin_  breaks the story, they’ll have to arrest him and we’ll be sure the information will get out there.” And for all Rance knew Fisk’s name, Mike wasn’t going to cry if the man ended up dead again.  
  
“Right. All right. I have to go, they’ll wonder what’s taking me so long.” Matt breathed in and out again. “Look, Mike, I…” He stopped.  
  
“You what?”  
  
“Nothing. Never mind. Just let me know if you need anything.”  
  
“I will,” Mike said, and it wasn’t a lie; he would just make sure he never needed anything.

* * *

Rance tailed Karen expertly, but Mike kept to the rooftops as long as he could and the man didn’t spot him. Karen headed for her building’s front door and Rance slipped around the side to climb the fire escape. Once he’d turned the corner, Mike picked up his pace, not being quiet about it, and Karen turned with a gasp.  
  
“It’s me,” Mike said, his voice just loud enough to carry to her (he hoped; he didn’t have the greatest grasp of an average person’s hearing anymore). “There’s someone waiting for you in your apartment.”  
  
“What?” Karen demanded. “How do you know?”  
  
“He followed you from Murdock’s apartment. He’s climbing the fire escape.”  
  
“My window’s locked,” Karen said. Mike huffed out a laugh.  
  
“That won’t stop him.” Indeed, he could hear Rance jimmying the latch.  
  
Karen took a deep breath and said resolutely, “I have to go in.”  
  
“I know, but I’ll go first. I’ll deal with him, and then you can get the drive from wherever you hid it.”  
  
Karen giggled, a high, nervous sound. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you know that?”  
  
“It was the right thing to do,” Mike said. “I assumed.”  
  
“It wasn’t the  _smart_  thing to do,” Karen muttered, and turned back to her door. “How do you want to do this?”  
  
“Make a lot of noise in the hall to draw his attention, and I’ll go in the window behind him. I’ll open the door when it’s safe.”  
  
He heard her swallow. “OK.”  
  
“Ms. Page,” he said, and laid his hand on her arm, just for a second. “I won’t let him hurt you. I promise.”  
  
“You’d better hurry,” she said, but she nodded.  
  
The fire escape creaked when he hauled his weight onto it, but he doubted a normal person would be able to pick out the sound over the patter of the rain. Mike made it to Karen’s window just as she made a  _thump_  in the hall and cursed under her breath as if she’d stumbled. Rance crouched next to her loveseat; Mike assumed he was out of the line of sight from the door.  
  
There wasn’t any good way to get inside silently, so Mike settled for throwing the window sash up and sliding into the room at top speed. Rance had good reflexes but he’d been keyed up to be predator, not prey, and Mike was on him before he got all the way to his feet.  
  
Thanks to several more years of practice and the protection of his suit, Mike made quick work of Rance; the killer was good, but hardly a challenge anymore. He didn’t even manage to unsheathe his knife, and trying gave Mike an opening to catch him under the jaw with an uppercut that made his teeth clack and the smell of blood leak into the air where he bit his tongue. He collapsed with a grunt and Mike took advantage of his dazed state to roll him onto his stomach and zip-tie his hands behind his back. Then he risked leaving him for long enough to go open the door for Karen.  
  
She stepped inside hesitantly and her heart stuttered. “Oh, Jesus. Who is he?”  
  
“A hired thug,” Mike said. “Go get the file while I secure him.” He bent over Rance with more zip ties, taking a moment to listen closely for the minuscule rush of blood in the wrong place that would mean concussion.  
  
Karen hesitated for a beat and then hurried off in the direction of the bathroom, from the sound of the echos she created. There were some sounds of metal on metal and a little bit of groping before she emerged. “What now?”  
  
“Now I take him out of your life, and with any luck you’ll never see him again. Ms. Page—”  
  
“Karen,” she said. “You...can call me Karen.”  
  
Mike smiled and clenched his hands to stop them shaking from the wasted adrenaline of the too-short fight. “Karen, then. I know I’m not going to be able to stop you from looking into this.” That drive for the truth was one of the things he’d loved about her. “But please, next time call me first. I can help.”  
  
“OK,” she said. Her heart beat steadily. “OK.”


End file.
